PRAYERS

God of bright colours: rainbows, peacocks, And the shot-silk gleam of springing Wind-shaken wheat On rolling red-ribbed Earth: Thou Who dost bring to birth From out the womb Of darkness golden flowers, Filling the hollows With daffodils in March, Cowslips in April, Dog-roses in May, Who in the smouldering forest Makes the huge Red flare of Autumn: God of all the colours On Earth, and hues (too bright for mortal eyes) In Paradise— Unblind me to Thy glory, That I may see!

God of light dancing: Waves and ripples In foam and forest, And shadows under leaves, Lambs leaping, prancing, Horses, dragon-flies, Stars ... Thou Whose eye perceives How and in what dream-ecstasy tall reeds Shake out brown hair and sway Like dusky girls Tranced in an Indian air; Who knowest the way Of clouds Which glide o’er blue unflowered fields, Scattering shadows On golden meadows And fields of dancing daisies: Teach me, O Lord, The rhythm of that joy which is Thy mind! Make my soul dance!

God of the steadfast line, Who laid the curving Cotswolds on the sky: God of the hills, And of the lonely hollows in the hills, And of the cloudy nipples of the mountains: Teach me thy passionate austerity! God of elm twigs And of all winter trees Etched ebony on sunset, or bright silver Upon hard morning heavens; Cunning shaper of ferns, And ferns which whitely gleam on frosty windows And snow-flakes: God of the naked body beautifully snatched To some swift-gestured loveliness of Heaven: Master Of stars, And all beneath most passionately curbed In Form: catch up my sprawling soul and fix it In gesture of its lost divinity!

God of fine fellowship in heaven and earth, O let me share A little of the gaiety of saints. Sometimes let angels carelessly with robins Sing in these Minsterworth trees. Teach me that mirth, Give me that happy heart, hating the thin Blasphemous gravity of wicked men.